Closing of Fly Virtual

On 15 September 2026 Fly Virtual shut down its operations. It was one of the best virtual airlines affiliated with the Vatsim network and one I had been a member of for over 8 years. It had several hundred virtual pilots, conducting thousands of flights each year. I made over 300 flights with Fly Virtual since 2018. The message about imminent shutdown of Fly Virtual reached me during a train trip, on 11th September. I received an e-mail which stated: Pilots, it's unfortunate but Fly Virtual will be closing effective September 15th, 2026. It has been a good run, but our flight numbers keep falling as many in the community have turned to other venues like Volanta or just using MSFS for their community engagement. The cost of running the server/site has also gone up and we must must balance the benefit with the gain. There are several other considerations as well. Our site is old and is running on a unsupported frozen server. It needs a lot of work to get it up to where it can run on the…

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